I can totally relate. I started programming at around 18, writing games and utilities for DOS and other OSs at the time. I am 56 now and still actively writing code for my own SaaS.
I expect that when I eventually retire, I will end up writing code for Arduino devices and other things because it is what I truly love to do, and I never want to stop learning something new.
I don't know if it is guys like me skewing the numbers here, but I have a not insignificant LP collection that I've had for over 30 years now. I got rid of my record player decades ago when moving house but carted my LPs around, with the intent to buy a decent home stereo setup once I got established again and had the disposable income to buy something decent.
I am at that stage now, so will invest in a decent HiFi kit sometime this year. I guess I am also a bit old school in that I don't really listen to music while working etc., so things like Spotify and Apple Music etc. are not my thing. I treat listening to music as a bit of an event, that harkens back to my younger days of having album 'listening parties', so I expect I will still consume my music that way again once I get my record player.
Interesting - I was just having a discussion with my son the other day about the term "horsepower". Quick research showed that the average human can generate 1.2 HP in a burst, or 0.1 HP sustained. Is 0.5 HP the accepted measure for sustained output while riding a bike?
Depends on how long to sustain - 0.5 HP is 373 watts, which is more than male pros sustain over a whole race stage but less than some can do for ~10 minute sections.
Wow. I have a 6 letter Instagram account handle that actually matches a popular (Western) name and initial out there. So far I get about one fairly polite request per month via DM to sell my handle to them, which I always decline, but lately I am seeing a rise in the number of 'password reset' emails I am getting from Instagram. It's gone from about one per week to sometimes 2 or 3 per day.
That fact, plus the stories in this article is making think of really closing off my social media visibility a lot more than it currently is.
Similar boat here - 3 character handle (my initials), and a constant flood of password resets. I used to get a lot of offers to purchase, the highest being $20k, but those seem to have stopped lately.
I am in the same situation. Sometimes I wonder if I should have responded to a bit higher offer sent by someone who possibly was a super wealthy Saudi kid (I am talking racing-lambos-in-the-desert-rich kind).
I concur with this. Whenever I recommend Blackadder to friends or family, I encourage them to start with 2, then move forward, then go back to watch 1 if they become a fan. This was the exact path I took when I became familiar with the series.
In every instance where I know of people who watched 1 first, they are almost always put off by the silliness and don't continue.
I think BA2 will always be my absolute favourite of all as it was the first one I watched, and it also endeared me to the delightful characters that Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry and Tony Robinson brought to the show. Only Hugh Lawrie in BA3 came close.
Someone once told me - "British comedy is about making fun of yourself, whereas American comedy is about making fun of other people", and I have found it to be true in a lot of shows I've witnessed. Probably why I personally tend to prefer British comedies over American ones. I have a thing against people having a laugh at the expense of others.
That doesn't ring true to me at all. I'm more inclined to agree with Stephen Fry [1], who explains that it's ultimately a matter of optimism versus pessimism.
The great American comics are people like John Belushi, the wisecracking charmer who gets the girl in the end, while the British comedian prefers to play the failure; British comedy comes from strife and tragedy and embarrassment and loss of dignity, which is why most British comedy focuses on lower/middle class people and their relationship with the hierarchy: Basil Fawlty (John Cleese's character in Fawlty Towers), Blackadder, David Brent (The Office), and so on.
The types of comedic personalities you tend to see in American culture are the likes of Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler, featuring people who may be average, but generally don't start as failures, and if they do (or if they have an unfortunate fall from grace in the middle of the story), the central theme isn't the inevitability of their failure, but an optimistic path towards self-betterment and reclaiming control over their own destiny.
The US also doesn't have the kind of history of tensions between the classes that Britain has (even though wealth inequality is objectively worse, and the system is simply not recognized as being a class system among ordinary people). The American style of comedy goes hand in hand with the idea of the American dream, that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough.
The most "British" American comedy I've seen in recent times was Forgetting Sarah Marshall (written by Jason Segel, an American, but directed by a Brit, Nicholas Stoller), which basically revels in the haplessness and constant failures of the main character, and his path to happiness isn't the traditional American one (though it has that "pull yourself by the bootstraps" approach).
I recommend watching the clip. Fry delivers a very eloquent thesis. If you're not familiar with Fry, his answer might sound rehearsed, but it's clearly not; he's just extremely articulate.
Pingu was a favourite to watch with the kids when they were younger - so much going on with no words. Also loved "The Flying Adrenallini Brothers" which was an animation with a made up language but so many visual gag laughs.
I co created and directed the Adrenalini Brothers - glad you liked it!
The made up language was Rendoosian. In the beginning we tried to improvise gibberish but realised that it just didn't sound right so we wrote everything down.
Wow, this is an honour indeed to interact with you! I've actually gone back on Youtube and watched a few episodes again - ah the memories.
Loved re-listening to Rendoosian again - wonderful language that has enough of a hint of actual English that you understand what was being said or implied. Also loved the intro Rendoosian glyph fonts.
Thank you for bringing such a wonderful and different cartoon to the world!
EDIT (Translation): Binti Boo mit ur magnificibifici Cartoon grandi-max
I am a long time fan of Rowan Atkinson - though I must say, not of his 'visual comedy' characters like Mr. Bean or Man vs Bee etc. I lean more towards his 'Blackadder' characters (specifically Blackadder 2, 3 and 4. Series 1 was more a 'visual comedy' lead character than the latter, which relied more on a dour character with a sharp verbal wit).
Blackadder 4 in particular added in a darkness to the humour that was really compelling - that last scene in the last episode (when they charge out of the trenches into no mans land) was absolutely haunting and moving. As were the final lines given by the secondary characters (especially Capt. Darling)
EDIT: For those who want to see what I am talking about, here is the final scene (4 minute footage), though I'd highly recommend watching the whole series to really understand the interplay between the characters (especially the pathos of Cpt. Darling vs Cpt. Blackadder) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgyB6lwE8E0
I find Blackadder to be one of the greatest achievements in the history of television.
I’m still moved by just how wonderfully subversive it is. There was no need for that show to have anything close to the quality of writing it had over it’s run, especially when you watch the first couple of episodes. It could easily have run for years as a simple, meandering medieval sitcom that went nowhere. I’m so glad it ultimately went to so many places, across so many time periods, without it being an excuse for reusing the same old stories.
I still remember watching the final episode at school, in the early 90s, as part of a history lesson on the First World War. The way it turns from a comedy into something that couldn't be more serious! - except, that seriousness was always there. The tone doesn't so much change as reveal itself. Unforgettable.
You are so right about how the seriousness was always there and revealed itself at the end. I too was fairly young when I first watched it, and I think it really framed my propensity for adding humour to otherwise serious situations as a coping mechanism.
It reminds me of something else I watched in school - My Boy Jack - a film about Rudyard Kipling and his son. I recently watched it again for the first time since being a child. It’s worth a watch.
His sneezing in church, visiting his former school at open day and making a sandwich on a park bench are other priceless additions to the visual comedy hall of fame.
Memories! One of the things I had to do in my first ever job was swap the backup discs in a Vax PDP-11 that ran a big pharmaceutical inventory system. All that time waiting for those huge discs to dismount and re-mount...
I expect that when I eventually retire, I will end up writing code for Arduino devices and other things because it is what I truly love to do, and I never want to stop learning something new.